Brecht the exploiter: That’s the topic of Sara Farrington’s “Requiem for Black Marie,” an Incubator Arts Project production that considers the playwright as manipulative oaf and the women who love him.

In a program note Ms. Farrington says she was inspired by John Fuegi’s much-debated book “Brecht & Co.,” which posits that Brecht’s mistresses — Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin and others — are the true authors of some of his most famous plays. Brecht was like the foreman in a factory; the women made the widgets and even supplied the raw materials to make them with.

Directed by Shannon Sindelar, “Requiem for Black Marie” looks appropriately sordid. The evocative set by Cecilia R. Durbin consists of little more than a raggedy couch and a slanted wall of windows — part “Caligari” skylight, part scrim separating the characters from the miserable events on the prewar Berlin streets. (“Have you been outside lately?” they ask each other.)

M. Meriwether Snipes’s costumes also set the right tone, as do the women’s haircuts: a Louise Brooks bob here, a severe men’s cut there. And a three-person band plays scrappy, angular renditions of Kurt Weill songs, contributing to the atmosphere.

“Requiem,” though, feels sketchy, as if Ms. Farrington were still working out what she wants to say about Brecht, Weimar, feminism and the sexual politics of collaboration. (The Marie of the title was Brecht’s nanny and, possibly, sexual playmate.) Her Bert, as played by Caleb Hammond, is charmless and seems to have only one talent: attracting women (and men, too), though Mr. Hammond can’t help us understand how. It looks like a magical power.

His sexual charisma certainly doesn’t stem from confidence. When he recites poems here (the words are Brecht’s) he plays them down, assuring everyone they are only works in progress. (Bert, they’re good. Stick with it.)

And “Requiem,” more Expressionist than Brechtian, can sag: dreams are related, as are ideas for plays. But Ms. Sindelar, who sometimes mistakes loudness for energy, injects some sparks into the scenes. In one, Bert strips (exposing his non-gym body), giving his clothes to the naked Bess (Erin Mallon), as Hauptmann is called here. She puts them on, assuming the mantle of male power and, presumably, authorship.